Every time the Community Team has been restructured, we have been promised increased communication. And that has always been true...for a time.

When Eric Musco took over, the first few weeks were great. You guys posted a ton and I was cautiously optimistic...I am sure many others felt the same. We liked what you guys were doing, but we had seen it before.

Now just like all those teams before, you guys are posting less and less. I can't speak for everyone, but I will say that I haven't given up on you yet, so hopefully you can get back to the job you were doing a couple months ago.

Maybe there is just a lull in the new information you have to share, I don't know. This is just a friendly reminder that we appreciate the job you do and hope you will continue to do your best to keep us informed.

IT was kinda foreseeable that it will be only temporary enthusiasm... But who'd want to to be active on forums with such a "lovely" community?

This is exactly it. I believe anything they say someone will twist and turn their words and god forbid if they dont meet the exact time or criteria they said people go ballistic and insult the developers and forum speakers personally and call for them to be fired.

If the community could behave like rational adults it would go a long way to improving communication but sadly that will never happen. I personally think nothing is more important then the community - game devs/managers whatever relationship. As they can alleviate most things by just adding clarity.

Take the PvP debacle for instance, if they would explain that PvE gear should never in any instance or slot be better then PvP gear within a WZ that would take a way major concern.

If they stated the Augment exploit is just that an exploit and they are fixing it and will deploy an emergency patch when the fix is in that would alleviate major angst. Instead they remain silent while the community rages around them and people unsub because of it.

Or if they tell us damage is to high we will tune it once we are satisfied bolster is in a good place.

Or Sins/Shadows burst is to high or rage or the operative roll, is A) working how we would like it B) Is not working as intended and needs tuned, that solves some issues. All of this could be helped with a little bit of love from them to us.

Now we as a community need to take what they say and realize it is not set in stone and that you might not like the changes and it might be a nerf to your class or your pissed because you FoTM a class. Oh well we all know that is how MMOs and their balance functions. The reaction of the players on the forums hampers how much they are willing to talk to us and provide input on anything that they cannot provide absolute information on.

Lets band together and make this a better community.

please stop rationalizing every bad move bioware does by blaming the community. if they are not communicating, that is probably because they have nothing good to communicate. you don't need to communicate bad news anyway. they spread very fast.

I don't think anyone is blaming the community for mistakes Bioware has made, but I would definitely say that certain parts of the community make communicating with us a much less desirable job than it should be.

I don't think anyone is blaming the community for mistakes Bioware has made, but I would definitely say that certain parts of the community make communicating with us a much less desirable job than it should be.

I agree but is stopping communication the solution to that? On the opposite you have to increase. for example take that cartel coins issue where Eric posted that we can buy physical cards from best buy. however it was written in these forums for a while that they are not available. Now, is being silent as he is doing the best way? Should not he (or someone who is looking into that) be posting about what is going on?

Another example is accounts being locked without any reason. (a lot of that in customer service forum). Only thing they post is you have to talk to customer service via phone. However reality is very different. You have to talk to billing department in Ireland who works 8 hours a day GMT and they also don't know what is going on , other than the billing system doing that, Shouldn't someone communicate on this?

There is nothing called over communication.

Some of them were just saying they came back from a vacation on Twitter, so that's probably why.

That is good to know if true, and hopefully that is why. Not that I expect them to report to us every time they take time off or anything, but at least it would explain why they have been posting less.

I agree but is stopping communication the solution to that? On the opposite you have to increase. for example take that cartel coins issue where Eric posted that we can buy physical cards from best buy. however it was written in these forums for a while that they are not available. Now, is being silent as he is doing the best way? Should not he (or someone who is looking into that) be posting about what is going on?

 

Another example is accounts being locked without any reason. (a lot of that in customer service forum). Only thing they post is you have to talk to customer service via phone. However reality is very different. You have to talk to billing department in Ireland who works 8 hours a day GMT and they also don't know what is going on , other than the billing system doing that, Shouldn't someone communicate on this?

 

There is nothing called over communication.

No, I agree with you. I am just pointing out that if the community made it a more pleasant experience when they do talk to us, maybe they would WANT to do it more.

I am personally convinced that Joveth was driven off by the community. Probably the CMs before him were too. I think he just couldn't take the abuse anymore and left.

No, I agree with you. I am just pointing out that if the community made it a more pleasant experience when they do talk to us, maybe they would WANT to do it more.

 

I am personally convinced that Joveth was driven off by the community. Probably the CMs before him were too. I think he just couldn't take the abuse anymore and left.

Considering two other community managers were let go at the same time, i'm pretty convinced it was EA getting cheap and downsizing, and not Joveth's decision.

But I do agree the community is really obnoxious in general. People who go after this kind of job will likely expect it and are prepared to deal with it.

We as a community team appreciate your confidence in us, we won't let you down!

 

Help us community team, you're are only hope!

Well, EA laid off 10% of their workforce last week, so who knows if Bioware was affected.

BW most likely wasn't affected. SWTOR is one of their best $-making games right now, thanks to the CM.

Ontop of that -- while EA owns BW, BioWare still functions as a subsidiary -- and aside from budget cuts, EA does not dictate how staffing is handled at BW. (Note: Information came from BioWare themselves during a "Get a Job at Bioware" panel at PAX East)

Every time the Community Team has been restructured, we have been promised increased communication. And that has always been true...for a time.

 

When Eric Musco took over, the first few weeks were great. You guys posted a ton and I was cautiously optimistic...I am sure many others felt the same. We liked what you guys were doing, but we had seen it before.

 

Now just like all those teams before, you guys are posting less and less. I can't speak for everyone, but I will say that I haven't given up on you yet, so hopefully you can get back to the job you were doing a couple months ago.

I disagree. It's fairly normal to see "insufficient" communications (in players eyes) ahead of a major patch, especially one that creates any kind of self-induced player controversy. The appetite for information is insatiable, the patience levels in some almost zero, and that is prime time for complaint based threads.

Maybe there is just a lull in the new information you have to share.....

Ya think?

They cannot reveal what is not ready for public release yet.

Also, they are professionals. So they are not likely to respond to subjective doomsday threads and posts that are very common ahead of a major patch either. They certainly are not going to respond to hyperbolic doomsday posts, or posts that attack them (not saying this thread is one of those.. just commenting on the general craziness in the forum since some of the 2.1 patch content was released through the internet partners).

This is just a friendly reminder that we appreciate the job you do and hope you will continue to do your best to keep us informed.

Again.. they are professionals. I dont' think they need any friendly reminders.. and the fact that Eric responded to this thread proves my point. Ask them direct, honest, non-inflammatory questions and they have been really good about responding IMO (though not always to the satisfaction of the requestors.. but that's a different issue entirely).

This is exactly it. I believe anything they say someone will twist and turn their words and god forbid if they dont meet the exact time or criteria they said people go ballistic and insult the developers and forum speakers personally and call for them to be fired.

Right on. Many of the forum goers seem to have this idea in their heads that between writing yellow posts the community team is cracking the whip on the rest of the devs... which is kind of hilarious if you think about it.

The community team just relays the information they get and try to summarize the community reaction....that's why they are the c o m m u n i t y team. But they get all the hate directed at them personally as though they are the ones directly responsible for everything.... It's not a job I would want.

But it's not a symphtom of "this forum". The community reaction to the info realeased over on dulfy was every bit as negative and vitriolic as it would have been had they released it here.

The community reaction to the info realeased over on dulfy was every bit as negative and vitriolic as it would have been had they released it here.

Indeed it was. A sad statement on a minority of the playerbase IMO.

Hey Icebergy!

 

Fear not, we have not gotten complacent in our communication. I believe your last sentence or two is the main focus. We will definitely have a lot more to comment on and talk about as we get closer to 2.1! As you may have noticed, we worked with some fan sites to help them get some of the cooler information to you which in some cases steals a little thunder from the "yellow posts," but we think this is more fun for community interaction overall.

 

As some have noted, there will also be times where we are on vacation and communication could lighten during those days. I know there are things that folks are still looking for information on such as when the Bolster bugs will be addressed and Gamestop/Best Buy issues, and I will continue to give information on those and any other issues as I have it!

 

We as a community team appreciate your confidence in us, we won't let you down!

 

-eric

 

Thanks Eric, I appreciate the fact that you face issues like this head on when some of the previous CMs may have hid from them instead.

How about communicating the reason why heroic space mission rewards were nerfed in last week's patch? Been waiting a week for an answer. Link to the thread here:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=6197210

Thanks Eric, I appreciate the fact that you face issues like this head on when some of the previous CMs hid from them instead.

Fixed that for ya.

I have a request, when you give other sites exclusive news, could you please link to that in the community news section? It would be helpful for site visitors to know where to go to read up on these exclusives, and I'm sure the other sites would appreciate the traffic.

I support this request too.

I don't visit Dulfy's site very often, since it contains a whole bunch of potential spoilers, walkthroughs, explanations, etc. that I don't necessarily want to read or be exposed to. But obviously I do when I'm really stuck!

I get that you want to broaden the scope of community interaction, but I had no idea that she had some pre-release information on the 2.1 update before it was even on the official swtor.com website. At least maybe the Community team drops a line in this forum with an external link so the Dev Tracker picks it?